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Professor Ed Cairns: A Personal and Professional Biography
Mícheál D. Roe
Seattle Pacific University and University
of Ulster
Martyn Barrett
University of Surrey
Daniel Bar-Tal
Tel Aviv University Diane Bretherton
University of Queensland
Andrew Dawes
University of Cape Town Elizabeth Gallagher
University of Ulster
Melanie L. Giles
University of Ulster Ilse Hakvoort
University of Gothenburg
Brandon Hamber
INCORE, University of Ulster Scott L. Moeschberger
Taylor University
Cristina J. Montiel
Ateneo de Manila University Orla T. Muldoon
University of Limerick
Gabi Salomon
Haifa University Karen Trew
Queens University
Michael G. Wessells
Columbia University
This article provides a brief overview of Ed Cairns’ (1945–2012) personal and pro-
fessional life. Born, raised, and educated in Belfast, Ed’s career at the University of
Ulster spanned the years of Northern Ireland’s contemporary political violence—from
the riots of the early 1970s, through the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, and into the
present postconflict period. A fellow of both the British Psychological Society and the
American Psychological Association, Ed was a leading international scholar on social
identity, conflict and peace, and children and political violence. He was a committed teacher
and mentor of many university students and of many peace psychologists from around the
globe. He was also an influential leader worldwide and the first international President of
APA’s Division 48, the Society for the Study of Peace, Conflict, and Violence.
Keywords: Cairns, Northern Ireland, children, political violence, peace psychology
Personal Life
Samuel Edmund Cairns (Ed) was born on
September 5, 1945, in Belfast, Northern Ire-
land.
1
This was early post-World War II Bel-
fast—a war-damaged but bustling industrial
city. Ed particularly recalled the shipyards of
his childhood and the whistle “blast” signaling
the beginning or ending of the workday. Ed was
an only child, and he spent the first 18 years of
1
This article is based in part on three of four papers com-
memorating Ed Cairns and presented in a symposium at the
120th APA annual convention in Orlando, FL: Barrett et al.
(2012);Moeschberger (2012), and Roe and Giles (2012).
Author biographies can be found in the Appendix.
CORRESPONDENCE CONCERNING THIS ARTICLE should be
addressed to Mícheál D. Roe, Department of Psychology,
Seattle Pacific University, Seattle, WA 98119. Contact:
E-mail: mroe@spu.edu
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology © 2014 American Psychological Association
2014, Vol. 20, No. 1, 3–12 1078-1919/14/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0035446
3
life in same South Belfast neighborhood. With
multiple generations of extended family nearby,
a number of cousins his age filled the role of
siblings. His grandfather was a local milk-man,
and Ed occasionally helped with this family
business. Ed recalled how his first encounter
with “applied” psychology was during this Bel-
fast childhood and via his grandmother, who
classically conditioned him to avoid Guinness
stout. Walking to church on countless Sunday
mornings, passing by pubs with open doors and
yeasty odors wafting out while the proprietors
cleaned their floors of spilled beer, his “teeto-
taler” Grandmother would opine, “Oh, but it
smells terrible! Tsk, tsk!” And it worked! Ed
did develop (a slight) aversion to the odor of
stout, which he never unlearned so as to enjoy
that brew. (Having said this, we should add that
Ed felt differently about fine wines; and many a
lovely South African Shiraz was enjoyed by
visiting peace psychologists in his home.)
As a youth, Ed was an avid Boy Scout. He
was also a talented rugger and played first team
rugby at Queens University, Belfast, as both an
undergraduate and a doctoral student. Not sur-
prising to those who follow this sport, Ed’s two
front teeth were kicked out one day in a partic-
ularly rough game; and in consequence, he wore
a dental prosthesis for the remainder of his life.
His now grown daughter Clare recalled that when
she and her siblings were young, Ed would re-
move those two false teeth and chase the children
around the house pretending to be a “monster!”
Ed’s father was an ambitious officer in North-
ern Ireland’s Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC),
and achieved Head Constable at an early age.
The RUC was the police force in Northern Ireland
during the period of The Troubles. It was a polit-
icized and controversial body, predominantly
Protestant in composition, accused of one-sided
policing and sectarianism by nationalists, while
lauded by unionists.
2
It is unlikely that his father’s
occupation overshadowed Ed’s childhood, but it
probably raised some dissonance as he became
more reflective in his thinking and more aware
of the antagonists in Northern Ireland’s political
violence. It is interesting that when asked a few
years ago about who likely was the leading
contemporary statesperson in Northern Ireland,
Ed offered the nationalist John Hume of the
Social Democratic and Labor Party, but then he
exclaimed (and with emphasis), “But oh, my
father would never have agreed!”
Ed and Ida knew each other as children,
began their romance as teens via church activ-
ities, and married in 1968. Following a short
period in Manitoba, Canada, they returned to
Northern Ireland and spent a few years on the
outskirts of Belfast in a small mobile home on a
family farm. As Ida recalled, those early years
were difficult. They had an infant daughter
(Tara, b. 1970), very little money, Ed was
studying for his doctorate, and “worry of The
Troubles was always in the background.” (Ed
often referred to this as “the constant drip of
The Troubles.”) In 1972, the young Cairns fam-
ily moved to Coleraine when Ed joined the then
“New” University of Ulster (UU); and they
remained in Coleraine for the remainder of Ed’s
life. Second daughter Clare was born in 1974,
the year of the Ulster Workers’ Council Strike
that was enforced by loyalist paramilitaries and
ultimately succeeded in bringing down the po-
wer-sharing Northern Ireland Assembly and
Executive. During the riotous weeks of the
strike, access to electricity was sporadic at best,
and Ida and Ed resorted to sterilizing Clare’s
bottles over flames in the fireplace of their
home. Their third child, son Ryan, was born in
no less a tumultuous year—1981, the year of the
Hunger Strike that pitted republican prisoners in
Northern Ireland against Prime Minister Marga-
ret Thatcher. Whereas, it could be said that the
Ulster Worker’s Council Strike galvanized and
radicalized unionists in Northern Ireland, the
Hunger Strike and consequent deaths because of
starvation of republican prisoners did the same
for nationalists in Northern Ireland.
The Troubles did not overshadow all of the
Cairns’ family life. For example, for most of the
children’s lives, and even today, the Cairns had
ponies. In fact, Ed fancied himself to be quite an
equestrian; that is, until the day he fell from his
small steed and cracked his rib. Trained as a
nurse, Ida served in a variety of health care roles
over the years. When Ryan started school, Ida
returned to full time work as a “community
nurse”—a position highly regarded and re-
spected by all in Coleraine. And although Ed
was a promising senior lecturer by this time and
2
Regardless of ethnopolitical allegiance, policing the di-
vided society of Northern Ireland was certainly a challeng-
ing task; and many hundreds of RUC officers lost their lives,
and many thousands were injured during this period.
4 ROE ET AL.
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author of a number of publications, to the uni-
versity security officer, he was known as “Nurse
Cairns’ husband.” Married for nearly 45 years,
Ed and Ida continued to be deeply devoted to
one another, openly loving and fun loving. Along
with their three children, they also laid claim to
seven grandchildren. As Ed was a loving, devoted
husband, he was also a loving, devoted father,
who encouraged inquiring minds in his children.
He also encouraged his daughters not to be
bound by gender, but to consider all professions
as they dreamed of their futures. He instilled
self-confidence in his children with the charge,
“Whatever you do, do the job well.” Tara, by
the way, completed her PhD in clinical psychol-
ogy and is now in independent practice. Clare
completed a law degree and is now a practicing
attorney and partner in a law firm. Ryan went
the way of computer technology, and he is now
in IT and software development.
Ed and Ida were warm, convivial hosts. Hos-
pitality of the Cairns home began in the early
days of the “New” University. Psychology was
a small department then, and socializing among
faculty members and their families occurred
almost every weekend. This extended to Ed’s
doctoral students, particularly those whose
homes were far away in other countries; and
many a visiting peace psychologist enjoyed gra-
cious, genuine welcome and stimulating con-
versation around the Cairns’ dining room table.
As Ed pondered his imminent retirement, he
declared “I don’t plan to be idle.” One area
where he intended to direct more time and en-
ergy was in voluntary service in Uganda with Ida.
His first trip was in 2009. While there he visited
the northern city of Gulu, which much to his
surprise had a university with a “Peace Centre”;
and in his words, “I have taken it upon myself to
try and support the director and the center.” He
did succeed in bringing a Ugandan doctoral
student to the University of Ulster to study with
him, even in his retirement. As can be imagined,
his untimely death was sorely felt by her.
Professional Life
Becoming Established as a Northern
Irish Scholar
Ed completed his BA in Psychology at
Queens University, Belfast, in 1968. Shortly
after graduating, he began his professional ca-
reer, not as an academic social psychologist, but
as a clinical psychologist at the Selkirk Hospital
in Manitoba, Canada. Ed realized that being a
clinical practitioner was not the future in psy-
chology that he wanted, and in 1970 he and his
young family moved back to Northern Ireland,
where he entered a doctoral program at Queens.
In 1972, he began his long career at UU as an
ABD Lecturer.
3
He completed his PhD in 1974,
achieved Senior Lecturer status in 1984, and
was awarded the rank of Professor in 1993.
Ed often reminisced about how he was dis-
couraged by his professors from studying the
conflict in Northern Ireland; and in fact, Ed’s
early research in the 1970s actually had cogni-
tive-developmental and psychometric focuses
(e.g., the relationship between person-traits and
information processing speed, properties of the
Matching Familiar Figures Test). Yet even dur-
ing those early years, Ed was nurturing a con-
viction that the conflict should be a subject of
serious academic study and that serious academic
study should translate into real life applications
“on the ground.” His earliest published work, in
which Northern Ireland’s sectarian divide was
addressed, was a 1976 paper in the British Jour-
nal of Social and Clinical Psychology (Cairns &
Duriez, 1976). Typical of Northern Irish re-
search at the time, in response to ethical con-
cerns the study used an imaginative indirect
approach to investigate the effects of speaker
accent on Catholic and Protestant children’s
recall.
4
Looking back on this study decades
later, Ed chuckled and remarked that it was not
particularly strong methodologically; and that
he thought the British Psychological Society
(BPS) was probably attempting to encourage
this nascent research on sectarianism and po-
litical violence in Northern Ireland by pub-
lishing it.
Social psychological research on the political
violence in Northern Ireland blossomed in the
1980s (gaining some impetus from a friendly
rivalry between Ed at UU and Queen’s Univer-
sity colleagues, and their respective doctoral
students). The publishing of Ed’s first book in
1987, Caught in Crossfire: Children in North-
3
“All But Dissertation.”
4
In this case, the ethical concern among Northern Irish
researchers was inadvertently sensitizing children to issues
in the political conflict of which they were unaware (e.g.,
ethnic cues in personal names).
5CAIRNS’ PERSONAL AND PROFESSIONAL BIOGRAPHY
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ern Ireland (Cairns, 1987), established Ed as a
leading expert on children and political violence
in the Province and brought his work to the
attention of the broader international academic
community. During this period Ed found him-
self at odds with the prevailing professional
opinions that living in settings of political vio-
lence inevitably lead to traumatized children.
As an empirical behavioral scientist, he found
himself at odds with the psychodynamic theo-
reticians and clinicians making public pro-
nouncements at the time; and he became more
and more disenchanted with the dominating so-
cial psychological models of intergroup conflict
originating from the United States. Ed turned to
Western European social psychology for alter-
nate models, and adapted Henri Tajfel’s Social
Identity Theory to the Northern Irish context; in
fact, his 1982 chapter on Northern Ireland in
Tajfel’s Group Identity and Intergroup Atti-
tudes was seminal (Cairns, 1982).
Ed was a very active member of the Northern
Ireland Branch of the BPS (NIBPS), and served
in its leadership in a variety of roles. During the
late 1970s/early 1980s, he used his influence in
NIBPS to convene with Joan and Jeremy Har-
bison a series of conferences on “Children of
The Troubles.” These meetings brought to-
gether local psychologists, both academics and
practitioners, in public forums to address grow-
ing up in Northern Ireland; and a string of
significant publications followed (e.g., Harbison
& Harbison, 1980). One of Ed’s longtime
friends and colleagues at Queens University,
Karen Trew, describes the nature of those con-
ferences as groundbreaking. Before their time,
“there had been little serious scientific study of
the causes or effects of the political violence in
Northern Ireland. In particular, psychologists
had been noticeable only by their absence.
Thankfully, the ensuing interest in the [psycho-
social issues of Northern Ireland] changed this
situation,” and relevant psychological research
and writing grew markedly.
Ed’s influence also expanded via his former
doctoral students, who moved into academic
positions in Northern Ireland and beyond as
next generation psychology teachers and schol-
ars. Former student and UU colleague Melanie
Giles described Ed as seeming to possess “a
natural ability to either attract very good stu-
dents or to bring out the best in the ones he
supervised. If asked, he would probably have
said it was the former but regardless, he was
extremely encouraging and very proud of those
he supervised and of the success they went on to
achieve.” Orla Muldoon, for whom Ed was an
external examiner of her doctoral thesis and a
UU colleague early in her career, reflected on
how Ed “mentored me quietly and kindly. It
was not anything formal, just a protective guid-
ing hand.” She also noted his strong conviction
and encouragement that she as a “local” stay
engaged with issues related to Northern Ire-
land’s conflict and reconciliation. Ed “made a
lasting impression on me about the importance
of work in this area.” (For a more comprehen-
sive description of Ed’s former students, see
McLernon et al., 2014).
In addition to his UU faculty duties, Ed was
also an active participant in two university re-
search centers: The Centre for the Study of
Conflict (CSC), from 1984 to 2000, and IN-
CORE (originally the International Programme
on Conflict Resolution and Ethnicity, and today
the International Conflict Research Institute),
from 1992 to 2000. The CSC’s primary mission
was to “carry out research on the conflict in
Ireland, to encourage the growth of an academic
community involved in conflict research, and to
support this process through seminars, publica-
tions, visiting scholars and liaison with other
institutions” (http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/csc/cscintro
.htm). Ed was a researcher and coauthor on a
number of the Centre’s publications over the
years; and it was the Centre that published the
public lecture presented by Ed, when he was
awarded his professorship. Titled “A Welling
Up of Deep Unconscious Forces: Psychology
and the Northern Ireland Conflict” (Cairns,
1994), Ed provided a substantive synthesis of
the research-to-date and the implications of that
research for understanding Northern Ireland’s
political violence, sectarian attitudes, and a way
forward to peace. INCORE, in turn, has been a
joint project of the United Nations University
and the University of Ulster. “Combining re-
search, education and comparative analysis,
INCORE addresses the causes and conse-
quences of conflict . . . and promotes conflict
resolution management strategies” (http://
www.incore.ulst.ac.uk/about/). During the
years of Ed’s association, INCORE had a
primary focus on international conflicts. To-
day it includes both international and North-
ern Irish focuses. While associated with these
6 ROE ET AL.
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centers, Ed participated on a team that wrote
one of the first comparative policy papers on
options for dealing with the past in Northern
Ireland, including the possibility of a truth
commission (Cairns, Dunn, Hamber, & Simp-
son, 1998). This was published in a remark-
able year for Northern Ireland’s peace pro-
cess, the year of the Good Friday Agreement.
Current INCORE Director, Brandon Hamber,
notes that this policy paper was written “be-
fore the topic became an area of substantial
academic focus,” and that Ed’s leading role
“is only known by a few” in Northern Ireland.
Expanding Influence Globally
In the 1990s, Ed’s international travel, work,
and reputation built rapidly.
5
An early event that
introduced Ed to significant international net-
works was the Third International Symposium on
the Contributions of Psychology to Peace held in
1993 in Ashland, Virginia. This was sponsored by
the Committee for the Psychological Study of
Peace, International Union of Psychological Sci-
ence. Ed eventually became quite active in this
organization, participating in many more sympo-
sia around the world, and cohosting with Angela
Veale the 2009 gathering in Northern Ireland.
Between 1994 and 1999 Ed helped establish an
international research network called “A Cross-
Cultural Research Programme on Children and
Peace” to study children and adolescents’ concep-
tions of peace and war around the world (for
example accounts of these studies, see Cairns,
McLernon, Moore, & Hakvoort, 2005;Hägglund,
Hakvoort, & Oppenheimer, 1996). Nations and
scholars represented in the network included Aus-
tralia (Ann Sanson), the Netherlands (Louis
Oppenheimer and Ilse Hakvoort), Malaysia (Mo-
hammad Yusuf), Northern Ireland (Ed Cairns),
Portugal (Lorenzo Orlando), South Africa (Gill
Straker), and Sweden (Solveig Hägglund).
Although never losing sight of Northern Ire-
land, this international work opened his hori-
zons. In 1996, he published Children and
Political Violence (Cairns, 1996) which sum-
marized and interpreted empirical research from
around the globe. In 1998 he began serving on
the American Psychological Association/
Canadian Psychological Association Presiden-
tial Task Force on Ethnopolitical Warfare. He
also expanded his explorations into collective
memories of groups in conflict, their roles in
maintaining and exacerbating political violence,
and how history and memory might be incor-
porated into conflict resolution and peacebuild-
ing processes.
6
This contributed to a shift in
paradigm, which enlarged the scope of conflict
studies, from a more narrow focus on settling
disputes to the current emphasis on societal
processes, such as reconciliation and peace-
building during postconflict periods.
In 2003, Ed published an edited work on the
role of memory in ethnic conflict, a global study
(Cairns & Roe, 2003). This volume brought
together some of the diverse strands of research
on collective memory and demonstrated that
this concept, as a significant component in eth-
nic conflict, had reached some maturity. This
conceptualization and the range of Ed’s work
have subsequently been used in other contexts.
For example, drawing on Ed’s collective ap-
proach has proved very helpful in describing
and understanding the way in which an oral
culture builds its identity and transmits knowl-
edge from one generation to the next in the
Australian aboriginal context (e.g., Bretherton
& Balvin, 2012). By 2010 when the Interna-
tional Congress of Psychology was held in Mel-
bourne, the range of countries and breadth of
applications of collective memory had ex-
panded significantly, with for example, a peace
psychology symposium convened by Hamdi
Muluk on collective memories of disasters in
Pakistan, Israel, Palestine, and Aceh.
Ed convinced scholars across the globe in
societies as diverse as Israel, Palestine, Cyprus,
the Philippines, the Netherlands, Australia, and
South Africa to consider Northern Ireland and
its lessons, and he influenced the scholarship in
these countries among others. He did this both
5
Ed’s frequent international travels were an oddity
among his rural neighbors in Coleraine. As he was prepar-
ing to leave on yet another trip, one of the local farmers who
attended his church remarked, “You flit about and don’t
light long!”
6
Related to collective memories, Ed was quite interested
in the American Civil War and its aftermath. In the mid-
1990s he was visiting Mike Wessells in Virginia and toured
the Museum of the Confederacy located in Richmond. Mike
recalls Ed coming away feeling hopeful about the prospects
of building peace even after such a bloody war. As they rode
down Monument Avenue, with many statues of famous
Confederate generals, Ed looked at Mike and exclaimed
“It’s amazing how people keep their war memories alive
after so many years!”
7CAIRNS’ PERSONAL AND PROFESSIONAL BIOGRAPHY
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academically and personally. Cristina Montiel
from the Philippines, for example, recalls how
Ed encouraged her to talk about her own Fili-
pino context and personal experiences with that
nation’s conflict. She notes how he also told
stories of bombings in Northern Ireland and the
consequent fears experienced by children. Ed’s
conversations with Cristina that wove between
personal accounts and intellectual analyses of
political violence, eventually ended with discus-
sions about forgiveness. Although Cristina
could not see the relevance of this in the
mid1990s as her country was emerging from a
protracted period of conflict, she recalls how
“Ed’s gentle spirit took root in my heart, as the
possibility of forgiveness became more of a
reality in the Philippine political diaspora.” This
influence ultimately led her to research and pub-
lish on forgiveness (e.g., Montiel, 2000).
The innovative ways in which Ed examined
and reported societal effects of informal con-
tacts and of educational initiatives in Northern
Ireland (e.g., the changes in the number of in-
tegrated schools, of friendship patterns, mixed
marriages, and housing patterns) were also of
great interest and importance to others around
the world. For example, Israeli researchers Dan-
iel Bar-Tal and Gabi Salomon noted that his
research revealed the complexity of variables
relevant to contact and its outcomes. It revealed
that contact, both informal and formal, may not
be particularly effective, because much contact
is superficial, formal programs address the al-
ready converted, and sociopolitical forces are
often stronger than the influences contact pro-
grams provide. While somewhat discouraging,
this taught Bar-Tal and Salomon not only to
moderate their expectations, but also to design
more sophisticated contact patterns between Is-
raeli and Palestinian participants that addressed,
among other elements, the trio of decategoriza-
tion, categorization, and recategorization.
More recently, Ed’s interest in intergroup at-
titudes and the contact hypothesis linked back to
collective memory questions, focusing on the
development of national identity and intergroup
attitudes. He collaborated on a large cross-
national comparative study that collected data
from seven and 11-year-old children represent-
ing different ethno-national groups in the
Basque Country, Bosnia, Israel, Cyprus, North-
ern Ireland, England, and the Netherlands (see
Oppenheimer & Barrett, 2011). The results re-
vealed the complexity of children’s identifica-
tion processes, and highlighted the considerable
variability that can occur in the development of
national identifications as a function of gender,
nation, and sociohistorical setting.
Ed and his doctoral students had been in-
volved in numerous collaborations with aca-
demic institutions around the globe. Two of
particular note were the highly productive, long
term partnerships with Oxford’s Centre for the
Study of Intergroup Conflict directed by Miles
Hewstone, and the Northern Ireland Project of
the Family Studies Center at the University of
Notre Dame, directed by Mark Cummings. Ed
and Miles Hewstone first began working to-
gether in the late 1990s, and they had written
grants, carried out research projects, and pub-
lished continuously since that time. Ed and
Mark Cummings began working together in the
mid 2000s, when they were successful in ob-
taining a substantial grant from the U.S. Na-
tional Institutes of Health. They too had carried
out research and published together almost con-
tinuously since then. (Rather than describing
their work here, the research programs of both
centers are presented in separate articles in this
special section. See Hewstone et al. (2014) and
Merrilees et al. (2014).
No review of Ed’s international influence
would be complete without addressing his leadership
in the APA Division of Peace Psychology (Di-
vision 48). Ed served as the first international
president of Division 48. Mike Wessells re-
called, “With his characteristically impish good
humor, he once told me that he felt like a
'bloody salesperson for Division 48' as he urged
all his friends and colleagues in Northern Ire-
land and other parts of Europe to join.” Ever
alert to ethnocentrism and arrogance, Ed was a
voice of conscience for our division when it
came to the unfortunate tendency of U.S. orga-
nizations and psychologists to make proclama-
tions about the situation in other parts of the
world, when people from the very war zones
under discussion were not represented. Ed
brought his own leadership style to Division 48.
Unlike the typical presidential vision casting
and direction setting, Ed took on the role with a
humble spirit in which he used his address and
newsletter comments to thank, encourage, and
recognize others. He spent his time deflecting
his own achievements and praising the hard
work of those who served alongside him.
8 ROE ET AL.
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Already a Fellow in the BPS, Ed was
awarded APA Fellow status in 2006. In 2010,
after almost four decades in the field, Ed re-
ceived high recognition by colleagues in his
guild. He was granted the Lifetime Award for
Contributions to Psychology by NIBPS. And
back on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, in
2012 Ed’s commitment to mentoring young
scholars was honored with the Division 48 “Ed
Cairns Early Career Award.”
Fully Engaged in Final Years
Although Ed retired from his teaching position
in July 2011, he continued mentoring doctoral
students and participating in rich collaborative
research with colleagues near and far. Offi-
cially, he was on a part-time faculty contract
with UU, but he was working long hours daily
from his university or home office, and thor-
oughly enjoying the life-of-the-mind without
the burden of writing examinations and marking
papers. All anticipated that he would be hon-
ored with emeritus status once his part-time
contract ended.
By the time of his death, Ed had published
three sole-authored scholarly books or mono-
graphs and coedited two others. He had pub-
lished well over 150 scholarly articles and chap-
ters. And of his research papers, symposia, and
invited addresses, they are too numerous to
count. At the time of his death, he was first or
coauthor on a number of in press or in progress
articles, and co-PI on a number of ongoing
grants. Ed was in full-stride.
Closing
To his students, Ed was an encourager, ad-
vocate, mentor, and inspiration. To his long-
time colleagues from around the globe, we
know of none who did not also consider Ed to
be a friend.
A collaborative tribute was written by Ed’s
international peace psychology colleagues, and
read at his funeral on February 19, 2012. It
closed, as will this article, with the following
words:
Ed introduced many of us to his favorite poet, John
Hewitt. His being drawn to Hewitt’s words in itself
said much about Ed, his integrity, humanity, relation-
ship to others, and his ability to reach out across the
divides that so troubled him and drove his work.
We quote from the last two lines of [Protestant] He-
witt’s “After the Fire,” which speak to the poet’s
[boyhood] friendship with [Catholic] Willie Morrisey:
“you must give freedom if you would be free,
for only friendship matters in the end.” (Ormsby, 1991,
p. 306)
Indeed this was Ed.
References
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and work of peace psychologist Ed Cairns. Sym-
posium conducted at the 120th Annual Convention
of the American Psychological Association, Or-
lando, FL.
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10 ROE ET AL.
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Appendix
MÍCHEÁL D. ROE is Dean and Professor of Psy-
chology at Seattle Pacific University, and Visiting
Research Fellow in Psychology at the University
of Ulster in Northern Ireland. His research has two
primary foci—Pacific Northwest Native Ameri-
can modern communities and Irish Diasporan re-
lationships to Northern Ireland political conflict.
With Division 48 colleagues Susan McKay and
Mike Wessells, he coedited the eight issue series
in Peace and Conflict exploring “Pioneers in U.S.
Peace Psychology.”
MARTYN BARRETT is Emeritus Professor of
Psychology at the University of Surrey, United
Kingdom. He is a developmental and social
psychologist but has a strong commitment to
multidisciplinary research and works on the de-
velopment of prejudice and stereotyping, na-
tional and ethnic group attitudes, acculturation
processes, the development of intercultural
competence, and youth political and civic en-
gagement. He is an Academician in the Social
Sciences, a Fellow of the British Psychological
Society, and an expert advisor to the Council of
Europe.
DANIEL BAR-TAL is Branco Weiss Professor
of Research in Child Development and Educa-
tion at the School of Education, Tel Aviv Uni-
versity. His research interest is in political and
social psychology studying sociopsychological
foundations of intractable conflicts and peace
building. He has published 20 books and over
two hundreds articles and chapters in major
social and political psychological journals,
books, and encyclopedias. He served as a Pres-
ident of the International Society of Political
Psychology and received various awards for his
work, including the Lasswell Award and the
Nevitt Sanford Award of the International So-
ciety of Political Psychology.
DIANE BRETHERTON is an Honorary Professor
at the Department of Political Science at the
University of Queensland. She was the found-
ing Director of the International Conflict Reso-
lution Centre in the School of Behavioral Sci-
ence at the University of Melbourne and for
many years chaired the Committee for the Psy-
chological Study of Peace of the International
Union of Psychological Science. Her recent
publications include coedited volumes Commu-
nity Resilience in Natural Disasters and Peace
Psychology in Australia.
ANDREW DAWES is an Associate Professor
Emeritus in the Psychology Department at the
University of Cape Town, where he lectured for
30 years. He was formerly Research Director in
the Human Sciences Research Council of South
Africa and Associate Fellow in the Department of
Social Policy and Intervention at the University of
Oxford. He is currently Research Advisor to the
Ilifa Labantwana Early Childhood Development
Programme (www.ilifalabantwana.co.za), an ini-
tiative that seeks to generate evidence to advo-
cate for essential services for young children in
poverty.
ELIZABETH GALLAGHER is currently based in
the School of Nursing at University of Ulster.
She has previously worked as a Research As-
sociate at the International Conflict Research
Institute (INCORE), an associate site of the
United Nations University based at the Univer-
sity of Ulster. She graduated with a BSc in
Psychology and Organizational Science and
also obtained an MSc in Health Promotion from
the University of Ulster. In 2010, she obtained a
PhD from the School of Psychology, University
of Ulster, supervised by the late Professor Ed
Cairns.
MELANIE L. GILES is a Professor of Psychol-
ogy at the University of Ulster Coleraine. She is
a registered Health Psychologist and actively
involved in research with a specific interest in
attitudes and attitude measurement. She also
(Appendix continues)
11CAIRNS’ PERSONAL AND PROFESSIONAL BIOGRAPHY
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
has a keen interest in teaching and learning. She
has been the Teaching and Learning Coordina-
tor for the School of Psychology for over 13
years and as such is responsible for overseeing
the quality of teaching and the development of
enhancement activities. She is also a Fellow of
the Higher Education Academy.
ILSE HAKVOORT is an associate professor in
education at the Department of Education and
Special Education at University of Gothenburg,
Sweden. Her research interest at present is con-
structive conflict handling in schools. Central in
her work is how conflict situations can become
learning experiences for pupils and teachers.
BRANDON HAMBER is Director of the Interna-
tional Conflict Research Institute (INCORE), an
associate site of the United Nations University
based at the University of Ulster in Northern
Ireland. He is also a Mellon Distinguished Vis-
iting Scholar in the School of Human and Com-
munity Development at the University of the
Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa.
SCOTT L. MOESCHBERGER is an Associate Pro-
fessor of Psychology and Associate Dean of
Honors at Taylor University. His research inter-
ests are focused on forgiveness, empathy, and
contact following intergroup conflict. He is cur-
rently working on a project that examines the
use of divided symbols in postconflict settings.
He has worked on collaborative research proj-
ects in both Northern Ireland and South Africa.
CRISTINA J. MONTIEL is a professor at the
Ateneo de Manila University, where she has
been teaching for more than 35 years. She was
the recipient of the 2010 Ralph White Lifetime
Achievement Award from the American Psy-
chological Association’s Division of Peace Psy-
chology. Montiel is currently a consultant of the
Philippine government’s Commission on Hu-
man Rights and the Office of the Presidential
Adviser for the Peace Process.
ORLA T. MULDOON is based at the University
of Limerick, where she is founding Professor of
the Psychology Department. Her overarching
research interest concerns the impact of group
memberships on group relations and health. She
is interested in how perceiving one-self as a
member of a religious, socioeconomic, or racial
group can impact on views of the self and
others, how these group memberships are trans-
mitted to and understood by children and young
people and how such memberships impact on
mental health and adjustment to trauma.
GABI SALOMON received his PhD in educa-
tional psychology and communication from
Stanford (1968), received the Israel National
Award for research in education (2001), an hon-
orary doctorate from the Catholic University of
Leuven, Belgium, and is a fellow of a number of
international organizations. He was dean of the
Faculty of Education and head of the Center for
Research on Peace Education, both at the Uni-
versity of Haifa. He is currently serving as the
chair of the board of directors of Sikkuy, a
Jewish-Arab NGO devoted to promoting civil
equality between Jews and Arabs. Salomon has
written and edited a number of books and more
than 120 articles and book chapters in the fields
of cognition, technology in education and peace
education.
KAREN TREW is a retired Reader in Psychol-
ogy at Queen’s University Belfast, where she is
now an honorary research fellow. Her research
interests and publications are linked to the ap-
plication of social psychology to community
problems, and she aims to relate academic
scholarship in psychology to practice and pol-
icy, especially in relation to children and young
people. She has been engaged in research into
the causes and consequences of conflict and
cooperation in Northern Ireland for over 30
years.
MICHAEL G. WESSELLS is Professor at Colum-
bia University in the Program on Forced Migra-
tion and Health and Professor Emeritus from
Randolph-Macon College. A former President
of APA Division 48 and Psychologists for So-
cial Responsibility, he is lead researcher on
interagency, multicountry research on commu-
nity driven interventions for strengthening com-
munity-based child protection mechanisms and
wider child protection systems.
12 ROE ET AL.
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